In recent years, mobile wireless communications have become increasingly popular. While desktop computers remain a part of the same network for a substantial period of time, wireless devices such as laptops, personal digital assistants (“PDAs”), smartphones, cellphones, and other portable computers are designed to be transportable and connect to wireless LAN networks (hereinafter “wireless hotspot networks” or “hotspots”) such as IEEE 802.11 (“WiFi”) networks. Such hotspots frequently provide internet access to a wireless device user, and wireless device users may thus connect to hotspots for the purpose of attaining internet access. Hotspots are available in many public places, including airports, coffee shops, hotels, etc., and the financial cost of using hotspots is often low, and sometimes free.
A wireless device such as a smartphone or laptop may possess the ability to use both hotspots and cellular base stations to access the internet. For internet access, wireless devices may prefer hotspots over cellular base stations due to a lower financial cost and/or a faster connection. When a hotspot is available, a wireless device may switch its internet access connection from a cellular base station to the hotspot. The internet access switch may be automatic, and thus the wireless device user may not even be aware of the switch.
A wireless device user will likely desire to have as few problems and interruptions of internet access as possible. However, it is a common practice among hotspots to restrict internet access to a wireless device until after the wireless device user has performed a task, such as, for example, accepting the terms and conditions of hotspot use, paying a fee for internet access via the hotspot, installing programming, or performing some other form of authentication. Typically, after connecting to a hotspot and opening a web browser, a wireless device user may be instructed to perform such a task. Restriction until the task is performed is often based on redirecting a wireless device user's internet requests to a hotspot webpage. Such redirection commonly involves domain name system (“DNS”) forwarding or hypertext transfer protocol (“HTTP”) forwarding (the terms “forwarding” and “redirection” have the same or similar meanings in this document and are used interchangeably).
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,894 discloses a method for redirecting a computer user accessing a network. The method involves a gateway device receiving from the computer an HTTP request for a destination address and responding with an HTTP response corresponding to a login page.
Effects of hotspot redirection on wireless devices vary, but as it has become popular for wireless device applications to access the internet, negative effects can be significant. DNS redirection interferes with practically every wireless device application that accesses the internet, as it is uncommon for wireless device applications to directly request IP addresses without first performing a DNS resolution on a domain name. While HTTP redirection may only interfere with applications that request web (HTTP) content, in recent years the trend has been for applications to integrate web content. Such applications would be affected.
Effects may be particularly severe for wireless devices that switch between cellular base stations and hotspots for internet access. In such cases, a wireless device user may be unaware of the switch between internet access services, and may not know why the wireless device applications are not functioning properly.
Hence a need exists for automatically detecting internet access redirection of a wireless device, particularly via a hotspot. Further, a need exists for alerting a wireless device user of such redirection so the user may take appropriate actions.